It was not Gary Neville’s fourth Sir Alex Ferguson mention within 26 minutes but his second Huel name-drop that prompted the existential crisis. What are we really doing here?
Cut to 42 minutes and 51 seconds of the first episode and YouTuber Mark Goldbridge, compering for the omnipresent Neville and Jamie Carragher, appears to ask himself the same question when gazing into the middle distance.
This is not just all the football, all the time, as David Mitchell parodied in his increasingly appropriate sketch from 18 years ago. This is too much “Nev” and “Carra”, far too often.
If you want to hear from Neville alone recently, then don’t worry, you have options. Since Thursday, he has been on a 75-minute Stick to Football podcast and two more Sky Sports podcasts (28 and 30 minutes in length, respectively) on top of that 76-minute episode to launch .
That is 209 minutes of Neville, excluding his punditry stints at Old Trafford and Anfield over the weekend, which, all distractions aside, requires seven 30-minute commutes to consume.
Who wants to listen to that much of anyone?
With variety therefore essential, Neville thinks he has the answer himself. He has tapped into Goldbridge’s Patridgean world and rebranded the social media personality’s “That’s Football” page on YouTube to .
That brings a hefty 1.54 million subscribers with it, proving Goldbridge is not only Neville’s greatest asset but someone who is willing to get milked, as he has a sip himself.
“I keep reading you’re not going to be yourself, you’ve sold out,” is Carragher’s opening barb, given Goldbridge’s real name is Brent Di Cesare, but there is only one winner here. Goldbridge has gone from his bedroom to mingling with Premier League greats, with Neville relying on his impressive pull to reach a wider audience.
Soon, will be flooded as (deep breath) Steven Gerrard, Joe Hart, Jamie Redknapp, Ashley Young, Tim Sherwood, Kelly Cates, Duncan Ferguson, Mark Crossley, Becky Ives and Peter Schmeichel all join the stable.
That means a regular stream of content, the instrumental social media soundbites that come with it, and the hope – in Neville’s eyes – that those craving hours of football analysis will stick to his Overlap brand.
If less was ever more – one or two punchy podcasts per week – then we are past the point of finding out.
With the World Cup, Euros and Champions League all expanding, it is little wonder football podcasts are doing the same. This remains a relatively new medium and the introduction of videos and polished studio setups has only accelerated its growth.
What is now a multi-billion-pound industry has Neville wanting more than just a slice of that pie, but in doing so he is also playing Jenga, risking the destruction of his own empire by trying to make it bigger.
Eventually, the tower falls, but whether the saturation point has been reached, was crossed so long ago the line is now a dot, or is still far away, is up for interpretation.
In a season where Neville’s Overlap signed a deal with Disney+ and Gary Lineker’s The Rest is Football expanded thanks to Netflix, it certainly feels close, but saturation is hard to measure.
Certainly though, if Monday’s episode featuring Gerrard is anything to go by, then this expansion already feels unsustainable, particularly if the main podcasts remain over an hour in length.
Goldbridge’s 10-minute rant about Manchester City’s weird win over Liverpool has twice the views of Gerrard’s podcast on YouTube, and just a few minutes in you can realise why, because anyone who persevered with all 67 minutes of the former Liverpool captain dissecting the weekend’s action, without reading obituaries or seeking freshly painted walls for greater stimulation, deserves a share of the ad revenue themselves.
Gerrard was joined by presenter Ives, plus two bottles of Huel on the table, and like a liquid lunch, it left you craving something with substance – or if it is ever going to be just one ex-player in the room, then at least one with charisma.
Add to that the scarcity non-Big Six clubs are mentioned – Neville even joked about Goldbridge wanting to discuss Sunderland vs Brighton – and the consumer will eventually have their own say.
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But all that will be figured out in time as the fight for eyeballs and ears rumbles on.
On Tuesday morning alone, my X algorithm fed me Sam Allardyce on his podcast, clips from , Carragher arguing with Simon Jordan, Goldbridge on his other podcast with Wayne Rooney, Richard Keys and Andy Gray rambling on their podcast, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes waffling on theirs, Rio Ferdinand defending Cristiano Ronaldo on his, Mark Zuckerberg sipping Guinness (okay, not relevant), plus Jamie O’Hara and Jason Cundy having a talkSPORT banter-off.
So why not chuck more into the mix? has sent this world into overdrive, and Neville will probably have long since quit the game by the time this medium crumbles. In other words, if he keeps cashing in, who is he to care?